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Documentary about the moviestar's last months including her tumultuous love affairs, drug and alcohol dependency, depression and eventual firing from her final film, 20th Century Fox's "... See full summary »

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Of all the stars in Hollywood's history, no one had a more potent mix of glamor and tragedy than Marilyn Monroe. Through performed readings of her personal papers, this film explores the life and personal thoughts of this seminal movie star and how she achieved her dream with determination and audacity. Furthermore, through additional readings and interviews of her colleagues and acquaintances, we also follow her emotional self-destruction under the sexist pressures of Hollywood until her premature death in 1962.Written by
Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)

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Trivia

Norma Jeane got her stage name when an executive at Fox told if she wanted to be a star, she would have to change her name. He told her she resembled Broadway actress Marilyn Miller, which gave her the first name Marilyn. Monroe was her mother's maiden name. See more »

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User Reviews

This is an HBO documentary about the life of Marilyn Monroe. Ostensively, 2 new boxes of personal papers has recently been founded in storage. It's not really strictly an organized personal journals. The movie is able to fit those writings with some of her experiences and other people's writings. It tells most of her story from her point of view. She comes off as a hard-working, ambitious, emotionally, and most of all smarter than her persona. I did find that the filmmakers treated her too much with kids gloves sometimes. Her sporadic work schedule is too easily explained away as her acting methodology. The girl had problems. The movie is a little too gentle with her.

Overall it's a fascinating look inside an icon. I wish it had more depth especially with her early life. It is interesting to see how driven she was as a young starlet. The other noteworthy aspect is the use of big name actors to read the writing. I'm willing to buy into so many different actresses reading Marilyn's writing. However I found the camera moves too much sometimes in an obvious visual attempt to inject feeling into those readings. It is more distracting than helpful. The movie should just let those actresses read.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful.
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